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Germany tells Jews, Muslims they will be free to circumcise

Written by laika

Friday, 13 July 2012 20:59

At The Chicago Tribune:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman promised Germany's Jewish and Muslim communities on Friday [July 13] they would be free to carry out circumcision on young boys despite a court ban which has provoked concerns about religious freedom.

Comments

PineHall - Legislate by Judicial Decree

|2012-07-15 22:36:46

I see this as legislating by judicial decree. The judge sees this as causing bodily harm and therefore should not be done on little boys. To me it sounds like he has no understanding of religion. I believe this is because of increasing secularization, however a rabbi called it

Quote:

a fresh example of creeping prejudice in European law against non-Christians

I don't think it is as much against non-Christians as being against the religious, but then again I am here in America and not in Europe so my perspective could easily be wrong. It is the armchair quarterback or the back seat driver problem.

emperorbma - latest bit of cultural backlash

|2012-07-16 00:23:04

There's more to it than Jewish and Islamic religious practice, unfortunately. We also need to consider the legitimate cultural backlash against things like the culturally coerced mutilations of female genitals done in various African countries as well as things like the tragic case of David Riemer who was "reassigned" to live as a female due to a botched circumcision but ended up committing suicide as a result.

In fact, the only reason circumcision was even practiced commonly practiced among Christians in the United States and Europe is because doctors and sexual purity advocates (like Kellogg) saw it as a means to cull masturbation and fornication. Some of these "advocates" even practiced the same kinds of mutilations that are being done on females in Africa. It is a pretty sordid past, so it is understandable that there is a backlash against it.

With that said, this is also not the motive for the religious circumcision in Judaism or Islam. It is a criterion of membership in the community rather than a criteria of abusive standards of sexuality. However, non-religious critics [and sometimes even religious] often fail to distinguish on this matter. They believe that it is just another case of parents who are unfairly imposing their will on their children without letting the child have a reasonable say.

At any rate, while I do defend the religious practice for Jews and Muslims, I think that otherwise such practices probably should be utterly and absolutely culled. It should only ever exist as part of a legitimate faith practice that has been doing so for thousands of years or as something that the person willingly chooses for themselves.

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Our valuable member laika has been with us since Thursday, 03 April 2008.

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